Chapter 11 Jack
Sol’s gone all day. It’s early evening when the Sirona docks. But he only stays long enough for Oscar to jump aboard, then they’re gone again, and even though I know he won’t be back before dawn, I spend so much time looking for him, it’s almost funny.
Except, no one’s laughing. Mal’s too strung out from this morning, and Skylar doesn’t know what to do with either of us.
“Why are they here?” He jabs a thumb at the window, gesturing at the increased presence of bikers by the beach, showing face at the lifeguard station building site. “Did something happen?”
Mal’s staring into space. For once Skylar’s eaten dinner and he hasn’t.
Skylar comes back to the table, eyeing us both as he repeats himself. “Why are Saint and Folk here if they haven’t come to see you two or the dog?”
Fiadh. She had pups when Mal found her in a Devon forest. They stayed with the Rebel Kings and we kept her, but she gets to play with them on the beach sometimes.
I push my plate away, hoping Mal will answer Skylar’s question.
Because I can’t. I have no idea why the bikers descended on Porth Luck this morning.
Just that their president corralled Sol on the jetty for long enough that I wanted to hurl him in the sea and I’m not sure why.
Sol slept with Cam when we were teenagers—when I wasn’t even here.
I’m thirty-fucking-five now. What’s it to me if they hug from time to time?
If Cam O’Brian pulls Sol into his arms like he owns him?
That’s not what happened.
I see that now. I saw it then. But Christ, this morning, if Mal hadn’t been there to haul me back…
“…copper pipes from here and the site in Porth Ewan.”
I tune back in as Mal grinds out an explanation that has my brain ticking and clicking, neuro tinnitus that drives me crazy when I let it. “Copper pipes?”
Mal nods. “Someone had the lot.”
“How?”
“Dunno. Didn’t ask.”
“What’s that got to do with Sol?”
Mal frowns. “What makes you think it has anything to do with Sol?”
“Cam came here. You saw him.”
Skylar’s eating the white ice cream Sol keeps in the freezer for him. His spoon seems to shiver in the air, but he keeps eating, for Mal’s sake, maybe.
Mal, who rises with his full plate and dumps the contents in the bin. “Cam and Sol are friends. It’s not weird for them to talk to each other if Cam’s here anyway.”
“Cam doesn’t come to Porth Luck for fun,” Skylar counters.
“Who the fuck does?”
The bin thunks shut and Mal leaves the room. Skylar’s heart follows him, I can tell, but he loves my brother enough to give him some space. He keeps eating. Cool as you like to anyone who doesn’t know him. Anyone who hasn’t lived with him for however many years I have.
“How are you doing with having the Kings around?”
Skylar’s spoon scrapes the bowl. Before he fell in love with Mal, he’d have deflected the question.
But finding his person has changed something fundamental in Skylar and he lets me see the conflicted emotion in his eyes.
“I don’t love the bike noise. Makes me feel fifteen again.
But I respect what they’re doing. These waters have been too long without lifeguards and lifeboats. ”
He’s not wrong and my thoughts reroute to Sol piloting the Sirona alone in the frigid winter chop. Him against the elements with no one at his side, and anxiety claws at me, so sharp it hurts. But it’s a pain I have to live with.
Sol is the sea. He’s the thunder, the lightning, the waves. I am the land waiting for him to come home.
“What else happened this morning?”
I slow blink, remembering where I am. Who I’m with. Skylar. I need to answer him. “Mal didn’t tell you?”
He shakes his head. “Not really.”
That could mean anything, and I wrestle between guarding my brother’s confidence and giving Skylar what he needs to take care of him.
Fight to choose my words carefully so they say what I need them to when they spill out of me.
“Something on the radio triggered him. I don’t know what, I didn’t get there in time. ”
“Flashback?”
“Think so.”
Skylar frowns as guilt gnaws at me. I know better than to think I can predict my brother’s war with his mental health, but seeing him so rattled haunts me.
“Did he say what he saw?”
Christ, yes. In so much detail I’m not sure he meant to. But that detail, I keep it to myself and give Skylar the steadiest look I can muster. “He didn’t want to talk about it.”
Skylar absorbs that and takes his bowl to the sink, washing it before he comes back. “He’s been having nightmares since Orion and the others went under.”
“I know.”
“He told you?”
Can’t be offended by Skylar’s surprise. Like everyone under this roof, my brother isn’t great at talking about his own shit.
But he told me about this—maybe because he thought I’d understand, when the truth is the sixteen years I spent in the military feel like they happened to someone else.
Even the stuff I remember is pixilated. Faded. An existence too distant to be mine.
I wish it was like that for Mal. Wish the horrors he remembers weren’t so vivid and real. But then, if they were, he might not have stayed in Porth Luck long enough to fall in love with my friend. And for my friend to fall in love with him.
My friend who smiles as Mal slopes back into the kitchen and kisses the top of his head. “Sorry.”
Skylar waves the apology away.
Mal nuzzles him again. Then turns his attention to me. “I don’t know why Cam came looking for Sol this morning, but if I was going to guess, I’d say it was because he thought it was Dav who nicked the copper.”
The clicking in my brain turns into a shunt, but not the kind that knocks me sideways. The kind that blows the cobwebs out, clearing the woods from the trees. “Fuck. You think he did?”
I say that to the whole room and Skylar’s snort is answer enough.
At least, it should be. But as Mal drums his fingers on the table, ruminating and saying nothing, it pisses me off.
I shove my chair back and stomp downstairs, returning to the bar to work the rest of the night, thankful the stormy weather dies down, leaving eerie calm in its wake.
The Joker is closed when bike noise in the distance lets me know the Rebel Kings are changing the guard. I walk Fiadh along the beach until I find one I don’t mind talking to.
Folk, naturally. He’s still here.
I climb the driftwood steps to where he stands, a phone pressed to his ear, a soft smile on his face.
Fiadh knows him. She ignores the respectful distance I keep and trots right up to him.
Folk crouches, scratching her ears. He murmurs something into the phone and ends the call. “You all right, Jack?”
As ever, Whitlock’s mellow voice reminds me of something, but I don’t know what. I should answer him, but I find myself thinking harder than I ever have about what I know about him.
He’s a soldier.
Least he was, and he’s around my age.
He’s not Regiment, though. He’s a Swimmer. SBS. Like other men I do remember.
“Did we serve together?”
Folk looks up, no surprise in his gaze…or is there? I’m not as good at reading people as I used to be. “Where’s Sol?”
“At sea.”
“Mal?”
“Asleep.”
Folk rises and glances over his shoulder, making eye contact with a biker almost too pretty to look at.
I know his name, I think. But I don’t care enough to sift through my brain to find it.
I zone out as he tips Folk a nod, and Folk brings Fiadh back to me at the top of the driftwood steps. “I’ll walk with you.”
Back to the Joker, apparently, but I don’t mind that. It’s late, and though my body has been humming with excess energy since last night, I know it won’t last.
We descend the steps to the damp and rippled sand. Fiadh has a red light on her collar so I let her flit ahead.
Whitlock ambles beside me, zipping his coat to the chill in the air. I feel like he might light a smoke, but he doesn’t, and that feels right too.
So right, and yet I’m compelled to ask. “Do you smoke?”
“No.”
“And you don’t drink.”
Not a question, but he shakes his head anyway. “Not anymore.”
Right. We’ve talked about that, and I don’t know why I’m giving this bloke so much headspace when I’m so fucked up over my best friend.
All I can think about is how good Sol’s hand felt on my dick and it’s wrong.
If his dad did rob the Rebel Kings, Sol will blame himself.
Sell a kidney to make it right. He needs me—to be his friend, not the lurker who can’t stop wondering how his dick would feel in my hand. Hot in my palm. Heavy—
Fuck. I almost stumble.
Folk steadies me as we near the Joker, but he seems deep in thought and clarity hits me, as it sometimes does, so absolutely that for a few sacred moments, I know this is how I used to be.
“I knew you, didn’t I?”
Folk slows, coming to a stop at the end of the sea wall before we reach the land that belongs to the Joker—to us.
Me. Sol. Skylar and Mal. He turns to lean against it and his assessing stare sweeps over me.
A soldier’s stare, and he reminds me of Mal and every man I ever went to war with. Men who are and were nothing like Sol.
Don’t know how you do it, Jackie. I’d die before I touched a gun.
“We met about a year before you took that mortar hit,” Folk says suddenly. At least, it feels sudden to me. “Spent six months embedded around the same place near Al Tanf. You didn’t like your 2 i/c, so you’d roll past me most days.”
2 i/c. Second in command. I don’t remember who Whitlock’s talking about, but I feel the truth in it. And I know I was close to Al Tanf when I got hurt.
Folk, though. I gaze at him under the night sky and there’s nothing but empty space in my head. I don’t fucking remember him. “What did we talk about?”
“Your brother. Your best friend.” Easy mirth warms Folk’s face. “You were worried about Mal and you missed Sol—you talked about him so much you didn’t notice I was chatting you up.”